In January I joined Jpassion.com. There were 2 reasons for this, one being I had previously used the service back in 2009 when it was run as JavaPassion.com. It was a Sun Microsystems sponsored service which suffered at the hands of the Oracles takeover. At that time I obtained 2 certificates in Javafx script and Java EE. I therefore knew the quality of the coursework was likely to be of a high standard.
The second reason was price. For a subscription of only $49 you get a clear set of courses you can complete. The current courses available are:
- 1 Java Programming – Learn Java for the first time (beginner)
- 2 Java 8 Lambda Programming – Learn Java 8 Lambda Programming for first time (intermediate)
- 3 Advanced Java Programming – Advanced Java programming topics (intermediate)
- 4 Java OO Programming – Learn Java OO programming techniques and best practices (intermediate)
- 5 Java Design Patterns – Learn design principles and design patterns (intermediate)
- 6 JUnit, Mocking, TDD, Refactoring – Learn and practice essential TDD and refactoring skills (intermediate)
- 7 Java Web Programming Basics (Servlet/JSP) – Learn fundamental Java web technologies (beginner)
- 8 Java REST Programming – Learn how to build RESTful services using JAX-RS (intermediate)
- 9 JPA Programming – entity, mapping, transaction, query (intermediate)
- 10 Java EE Programming – Java EE 5, 6 and 7 technologies (intermediate)
- 11 Spring Framework Programming – Learn everything about Spring framework (intermediate)
- 12 Spring REST Programming using JAX-RS – Learn REST programming using Spring and JAX-RS (intermediate)
- 13 Web Services Programming – Learn everything about Web services (advanced)
- 14 Hibernate Programming – Learn hibernate persistence programming (intermediate)
- 15 Java Performance – Learn how to monitor and improve application/web performance (advanced)
- 16 Java Development Tools – Learn essential dev. tools such as Maven, Jenkins, etc. (intermediate)
- 17 Groovy and Grails Programming – Learn Groovy and Grails (intermediate)
- 18 Ruby and Rails Programming – Learn Ruby and Ralls (intermediate)
- 19 JavaScript and JQuery – Learn JavaScript and jQuery (beginner to intermediate)
- 20 Angular 1 Programming – Learn AngularJS in and out (beginner to intermediate)
- 21 Angular 2 Programming – Learn Angular 2 in and out (beginner to intermediate)
- 22 HTML5 Programming – Learn Websockets, Geolocation, offline storage, etc (beginner to intermediate)
- 23 Android Programming – Learn everything about Android programming (beginner to intermediate)
- 24 MySQL Programming – Learn everything about MySQL (beginner to intermediate)
- 25 Hadoop Programming – Learn Hadoop and its ecosystem technologies (intermediate)
- 26 Docker – Learn Docker essentials (beginner)
Each course is broken down into topics. For each of these there is a pdf presentation, a lab which includes a homework and a recording which is the pdf presentation and an audio track. The recordings are more than just a bland reading of the presentation. The speaker goes into each topic verbosely and other resources are referenced. All of the topics are set out well and I managed to bash through a number of these without a hitch.
You start to hit problems due to the age of some of the topics. The applets and Java web start are the best examples of this. Very few projects use applets since they have been ripped out of most browsers (for very good reason). The Java web start was also a pain given that certificates are required to run them. You might say just add an exception. Unfortunately this does not work and though it is just about possible in windows, in Linux I just could not get it to work.
The OSGI topic also had versioning issues when using it in conjunction with the example maven projects. I ended up editing the manifest file in the jar to get OSGI to accept the example modules.
It would also be nice if there were some Java 9 and 10 courses that covered their new features, local var etc. Additionally the site design is a little tired.
It has to be emphasised that a year’s subscription is only $49 dollars and what you get is a wealth of knowledge here. Although it is little old in places, it is well worth a punt considering lots of people spend this on one night out or a week smoking.